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THE MEMORIAL OF VIllTUE 



SERMON 



PREACHED IN THE WEST CHURCH, JAN. 22, I860, 



^fter t!)e WtRt^ 



OF 



EDWARD EYERETT. 



By C. a. slilTOL. 



BOSTON: 

WAF.KKK, WISE, AND COMPANY, 

245, Washington Street. 

1865. 



THE MEMORIAL OF VIRTUE 



SERMON 



PREACHED IN THE WEST CHURCH, JAN. 22, 18C5, 



after tijc IDcatb 



OF 



EDWARD EVERETT. 



By C. a. BARTOL. 




BOSTON: 
WALKER, AVISE, AND COMPANY, 

245, Washington Street. 

18G5. 






BOSTON: 

PRESS OF JOHN ■\VILSOX AND SON, 
15, Water Street. 



r-» 



S E 11 M N. 



"The memorial thereof js ijimortal." — Wisdom of Solomon, iv. 1. 

The question whether we should care for reputation 
or posthumous renown, we need not debate. It is 
settled in our constitution. The breath is no sooner 
out of a man's body than we consider his career to 
decide his character. The present condition of his 
spirit, I heard proposed for discussion respecting a 
distinguished deceased person, on the very day when 
he died. 

Virtue is her own supreme motive ; but what may 
be said of our conduct re-enforces virtue that is not 
quite strong enough, as with most of us it is not, 
to go alone. So the guileless Charles Lamb quaintly 
speaks of the dehght of doing good by stealth, and 
having it found out by accident ; and the strong- 
willed Andrew Jackson declared, that, looking into 
his heart for the brave deed, he also believed all 
brave men would approve it. So the memorial of 
virtue, wherever may stand its living record of the 



human soul, is the true scripture and only holy book. 
With what a thrill we follow that famous succession 
of short but great eulogies, in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, of Abraham and Moses and Joseph and 
the rest ! Over the Old-Testament stories of Adam 
and Cainan and Jared, which we peruse with a dog- 
ged perseverance, from an inherited sense of the duty 
of reading the Bible through, — when we come to 
Enoch, why are we startled? Because, of all those 
mentioned before, it is only written, that they lived 
so many hundreds of years, and "begat sons and 
daughters ; " but of Enoch it is added, that " he walked 
with God." This makes his title in every letter ven- 
erable, till history be no more. We are informed in 
Genesis of many " dukes." Why do we know nothing 
about them but their names ? Because by no excel- 
lence were they, any more than a thousand modern 
dukes, embalmed in the recollection of their race. 
Teman, Zepho, Kenaz, and Gatam are forgotten: 
Abel, dead long before them, is remembered still. 

What will be told of us, after we are gone ? The 
date of our birth and death, our parentage and genea- 
logical tree, the descent of our estate and blood ; but 
beyond these inferior, transitory trifles, our worth, 
if we have any, will be the main thing in the mouths 
of men, bad men and good men alike. It was the 
Roman centurion, the agent in Christ's crucifixion, 
with the sword in his hand, that gleamed over and 



o 



guarded the dreadful doom, who cried out, " Certamly 
this was a righteous man." " A good name is better 
than precious ointment," and it should be prized. 

" For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, 

This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned, 
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful da}'. 
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind 1 " 

Even where the blaze of transcendent genius eclipses 
details of conduct, and streams down an aurora to 
all ages, our persuasion is, that the author of the 
divine sentences, syllabled for ever in the au", must 
have been a good man. AVithout goodness, talent has 
no crown. It can hardly amount to genius, or but 
to genius not of the highest order, or only of a way- 
ward and flitting sort. I think Galileo loses more by 
his recanting, than he gains by his discovery of the 
earth's motion. " I would rather have the regard of 
my neighbors," said a New-England poet, ^' tlian the 
fame of Shakspeare." " I would rather have written 
Watts's Hymns," said the holy man, your former min- 
ister, " than the plays of Shakspeare." The account 
of some men, like the geological record, is imperfect. 
But it has been said, not any man's genius, but only 
his character, what he wills to be, is immortal. I lis 
genius may be an accident of his organization, like 
his temperament, complexion, or tone of voice. His 
virtue will live for ever. If blind old Homer carried 
his harp from door to door, or Shakspeare entertained 
the poor players at his board, the mercy and hospitality 



6 

were of more account with God tliiiii the music and 
the poetry; though I cannot but think these, too, as 
more than earthly endowments, will, in their posses- 
sors, re-appear on the morning of the resurrection, 
and survive for ever. 

These remarks have been suggested by the bereave- 
ment which Boston and the nation have just been 
called to meet. If I did not believe the eminent 
fellow-citizen, in the shadow of whose death, day 
after day, we walk, to have been a good man, for no 
lustre of his intellectual distinction would I pronounce 
his panegyric, world-wide as its resounding will be. 
Of his mental accomplishments there will be no 
query. Though not a poet or philosopher, neither 
imaginatively creative, nor metaphysically close-grained 
in his writing, he was the prince, of scholars and 
rhetoricians, a luminous adorner of all truth. He 
was one of the number of singular individuals born 
into the world, whose mould is used but once, and 
then broken ; without peer or parallel in his precise 
quality. There has been, there could be, but one 
Edward Everett. But deeper than his special gifts 
of learning and reflective power, or all the graces 
that hung round him, lay the rare kindness he had 
not full credit for. It was hid somewhat beneath his 
grave and solemn mien. The applauded man seemed 
very solitary ; in a centre of admirers rather than a 
cluster of friends. He was a monumental man, whom 



) 



/ 



one surveyed with a cool enthusiasm, and hesitated to 
approach with familiarity, till his self-enclosure was 
found to be but a tender-hearted shyness and mod- 
esty, not pride or intentional distance. Perhaps he 
appeared so much away from us, by his dwelling in 
the past. His recollection held so much, it seemed 
less the faculty of an individual than the memory of 
mankind. Like a huge ship, he was steady with the 
weight he bore ; yet that ruddy cast of his complexion 
lacked not a tremulous natural sensibility. His pace 
in the street appeared as remote as a planetary revo- 
lution, in our cool, telescopic view ; yet, if one joined 
him, nothing could exceed the benignity and free- 
dom of his instructive communications, in a courtesy 
as humane as it was exquisite, and as genuine as 
it was abundant. He is the only person I ever knew, 
who always acknowledged the sending to him even of 
a pamphlet. He had not the native force of passion 
that may come in aid of philanthropy, to stiffen at 
once and kindle the reformer. Defective self-reliance, 
with excessive deference to others, kept him from 
heading and leading an unpopular cause, when he 
had no want of benevolence more than braver men. 
He could not rush to be the captain of a forlorn hope. 
It was not in him. God did not put it in him. But 
his caution, if not large-sighted, was conscientious. 
He wished and needed to feel the ground under him. 
Perhaps he hesitated because, by way of circumspec- 



\ 



8 



tion rather than prophetic vision, he saw so much, — 
possibly more than some who were before him in 
their word or deed. 

He has been complained of as long deaf to the cry 
of the oppressed among us. I count it a great virtue 
to have been antislavery from the beginning. But it 
is not the only virtue. Some, who were so, were 
faulty otherwise ; and some, not actively so, — being 
hindered by Constitutional scruples, — were virtuous 
otherwise. Else we should have a great many bad 
men, more than we should well know how to live with. 
Mr. Everett was not an early abolitionist; whether 
delayed by a fastidious taste, or willingness to com- 
promise from fear of offence, or by sense of legal 
duty, or by apprehension of the blood to which Mr. „ 
Webster, so long ago as he was in England, is re-# 
ported, when urged in conversation, to have said the 
matter must come ; though of that blood none could 
foresee the precious sum. But, if he sometimes 
marched slowly when the object was grand, he never 
moved at all when it was mean ; while no man has 
done more to promote that education which is the 
insurance of every worthy enterprise, and without 
which no beneficent undertaking has any basis, and 
no civilization or freedom can stand. The good seed 
itself, springing up in a quick-conceiving soil, soon 
sadly withers away. Human knowledge must deepen 
the ground even for God's word. If he valued wealth 



9 



and worldly advantages, who has been more con- 
spicuously unselfish to employ them for the common 
welfare ? What an almoner he has been, creathigr 
the charities he dispensed ! Nobly he stood self- 
appointed treasurer, chancellor of the exchequer for 
the patriotism and pity of the time. When I think 
of him, what comes before me is not the governor, 
senator, ambassador, secretary, or college-president ; 
but the traveller, night and day, in cold and wet, 
summer or winter, in his old age, through the 

\ United States, to coin his own golden accents into 
the Washington fund, — the purveyor of subsistence 
for the suff"erers of Tennessee, the pleader for a 
Sailors' Home, the advocate of " Christian retaliation" 
. on our rebellious foes. If he looked too much to 
the impression he made, that must be pardoned to 
an orator. Oratory, being an appeal to the instanta- 
neous verdict of the crowd, tempts whoever can wield 
its incomparable arts, — the wondrous weapons that 
vanquish without violence or pain, — to vanity and 
subserviency. It becomes sometimes a moral jugglery 
to entertain and deceive people with, or an mstrument 
of revenge to which sympathetic hearers can be ready 
coadjutors ; and this is the worse side of the two. 
But there was no hate or falsehood in him. If in his 
good nature he ever flattered anybody, he never 
resented or retorted insult or wrong. I suppose no 
speaker, that appeared so frequently, succeeded so 



10 

invariably ; and no one in the prime of his days 
could gather to the sound of his lips such an audience 
throughout the country as he, at threescore and ten : 
as I am assured by his early hearers no voice of these 
generations was so sweet as that of his young classic 
manhood. Yet this sensitive, seductive, intoxicating 
element, of air alive, and throbbing with his own re- 
echoed words, while he could not escape the praise 
in it he may have enjoyed, he notably turned, even 
on show-occasions, in practical directions. As it was 
said of Walter Scott, that he was a benefactor simply 
by the uncorrupting pleasure from his books, what a 
delight for millions has been Mr. Everett's speech ! 
But not the elegance, which has been specified of his 
address, should be emphasized so much as its con- 
secration to all good ends ; especially, let us all with 
grateful emotion say, to the union, re-union, freedom, 
and perpetual peace of this so long-distracted land. 
Call him backward ? Who has met the present crisis 
with a more burning zeal ] He has been cold, has he? 
Yes, like Mount Hecla, in Iceland, quiet and frost- 
bound while biding its time ; but, when the season for 
an eruption came, naturalists tell us, one of the most 
furious volcanoes in the world, as it flamed and 
poured its own molten bowels through its hoary 
top of eternal snow ! So the gray head of Edward 
Everett, uplifted to the universal gaze, shook and 
warmed in some passages with the outbreak and tor- 



11 



rent of his patriotic appeals, which had of angry 
invective no spark, of personal malignity not one 
lav a- drop. 

He culminated at his close. His grand climacteric 
was not at thirty or forty or fifty, but seventy. It 
is getting in these days to be the grand climacteric of 
others besides him ! Age is accepted as an apology 
for rest. But, in his case, the veteran tree ceased not 
bearing because it had been prematurely fruitful as a 
slender slip. The idea of precocity all had of him at 
the outset was contradicted in the end, by there being 
no corresponding compensatory decline ! He grew 
as long as if he had grown ever so tardily. What he 
effected, only a prodigious, never-remitted industry 
can explain. For a reward of his diligence, he 
waxed to the last, and did not wane when with sud- 
den beauty he set. 

"No pale gradations quenched his ray." 

He departed, being translated, "and was not; for God 
took him." He died ascending^ as the day-star rises 
for ever, only seeming to go down, and makes the 
Orient where itself is. His last compositions are the 
strongest in style as in principle. He concluded, 
holding forth the righteousness and truth with whose 
preaching he began. 

Mr. Everett's character from childhood up was 
touched by no wilful transgression. It had in it 



12 



nothing of grossness or flaw. He must be reckoned 
one of the great men whose private as his pubhc 
behavior is without stain. His purity was a logical 
result. He was a Christian believer. He was a con- 
stant, some might say old-fashioned, morning and 
afternoon public worshipper. He refused, in the 
West, it is stated, to see Sunday callers, on the ground 
that he was getting ready to go to church. His mor- 
ality, more than conventional, held him strictly to 
every obligation he knew, and made him an example 
to young and old. He was the converter of conserva- 
tive men. He w^rought for the right in quarters 
no other man could reach. He admitted his own 
mistakes with matchless magnanimity. His was not 
the stuff" for hero or martyr, but a rare combination 
of blameless traits. Not sublimity or glory, but 
serene proportion, was his mark. He had the balance 
in which virtue is said to consist. Spots on the sun I 
care not to point out. They are not in the sun's sub- 
stance, but in his atmosphere and our eyes : so our 
censures are often in our conceptions, and touch not 
the soul. 

Of all J\lr. Everett did and said, finish is the de- 
scriptive word ; and death, as if respecting in him 
this peculiar property, came to him not untimely, 
but when his work was done, and a perfect finish on 
his life. Seldom have attributes and actions so uni- 
formly rounded as his, with no angle to fix the eye, 
made an impression so strong. 



13 

With much form and many words, in Europe and 
America, the decease of our iUustrious countryman 
will be observed. But its best celebration was the 
quickness with which it was known ; as if on all at 
once a cloud had risen, or the evening twilight fell. 
It was noticed how long was the cortege that bore his 
body to the burial. But the tens of thousands of 
specators, " old men and maidens, young men and 
children," lining the chilly streets, were the true pro- 
cession. Not to commemorate transcendent intelli- 
gence, but extraordinary service, the bier was thronged, 
the bells tolled, the cannon pealed, the arms were 
reversed, public offices closed, the flags half-mast, 
business stopped, and the mournful melodies, to hush 
other noises, played. A man had gone of the few 
whom no one is inclined to reproach. 

From earthly sleep, he went to the great rest. He 
awoke to find himself with God. The morning 
broke on him, of time and eternity both. His sab- 
bath-day's journey was but a step to heaven. The 
religion he defended in his youth, and made the 
law of his life, was his refuge from death. A path 
ran for him how clear over the shadowy valley into 
the kingdom of light ! Let us so follow as to reach 
the same destiny, and, through the dark of nature, 
find our way home. 



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